I feed about 15 sites in the winter as we try to increase the Tree Sparrow population and when we ring at these sites our aim is to retrap Tree Sparrows to see how they disperse across the landscape. This site consists of an isolated hedgerow in a wild and windswept landscape and a couple of superb strips of conservation cover. The feeders in the hedgerow have been emptying fast and I have seen over 100 Tree Sparrows there and so I fancied our chances of a good catch of them. To this end we put a strong team together including Graham and Phil and it is great to be joined by these experienced chaps to help the others along and makes my job of training a lot easier.
A net alongside one of the strips of conservation cover failed to produce the hoped-for Skylark but did turn up a first year male Sparrowhawk.
I have been feeding a small area with rape seed and the flock of Linnets was at least 250 strong but we only managed to catch 13 which though good is such a tiny proportion of the flock, though it was still very helpful for the team to work through the ageing and sexing of them.
Yellowhammers came in thick and fast but the Tree Sparrows were notable by their relative absence. The nets went quiet quite quickly and it soon became obvious that this site has so much natural food that the birds were not desperate for our feed. We estimated the Yellowhammers to number about 700 but there could easily have been more. We retrapped two Yellowhammers, one from last winter and one from two winters ago. Star bird of the day was a retrap Tree Sparrow that was ringed as a nestling in May 2015 in a gamekeepers garden 5km away.
We ended up ringing 112 new and processing 9 retraps which is a bit below average for this site. Biff and I then went to a couple of other sites and fed them and also checked out a new site where there were a few Tree Sparrows. MP, GD, PD, PW, AM
Sparrowhawk 1, Yellowhammer 68 (2), Chaffinch 17 (1), Linnet 13, Tree Sparrow 1 (3), Reed Bunting 1, Blackbird 5 (2), Dunnock 2 (1), Great Tit 2, Blue Tit 1, Wren 1